Saturday Reflections 09.29.2018

Happy Saturday! It’s been a good week. Even though it wasn’t a SUPER productive week, I felt like I was really in the groove with everything and enjoyed myself. I like weeks like that!

Monday started with the boys biking to school on their own for the first time. I’m not sure I’ve ever let them bike at all during the school year, only once or twice during summer school. All the morning traffic going down the street they have to bike is pretty busy before and after school. But I’m trying to let them have a bit more independence and it worked out pretty well. Caden, who I expected to want to bike every day forever, was over it after day one. Shepard thinks it’s awesome, though, and I’m sure will be biking as often as possible now. The only thing I don’t like about this new freedom is that every single day we have to decide what the coming home procedure will be depending on which combination of transportation we each use in the morning. I’ve also haven’t been picking them up most days because it’s just such a huge waste of my time when they’re perfectly capable of getting home on their own. Plus it doesn’t make sense if they’re on bikes! It’s just an added little problem solving we have to not only think about, but talk about every single morning, which is already stressing me out a bit. But we’ll get used to it.

Monday is also after school clubs day. Week two, Caden still hated running club. This upcoming week he has an option to try a different class at the same time, but he’s been very noncommittal about it. I don’t want to force him to stay with it if he genuinely hates it, especially with his lego league later in the evening. But I hope he’ll give it at least one or two more weeks.

Monday was a very productive work day and I was able to get these six little Halloween dolls finished and listed by Tuesday morning, which was nice. I had time to go out and do a bunch of errands after listing, though I wasn’t feeling very good. My new blood pressure medication seems to make me feel pretty sick. I’ve had all kinds of mysterious new ailments in the week since I started taking it. I asked my doctor if there was something else I could go on and she wants me to stick with this. I’m currently testing a theory that a certain brand of coffee I’ve been drinking a lot of might also be contributing the my overall nausea, and after two days without it I’m thinking that might actually be the culprit. But I’m pretty sure my the medication is also giving me a potassium deficiency, causing all kinds of extra muscle cramps and aches this week. SIGH. I’m figuring it out. But…meh.

On Tuesday night we had a bit of a scare. We were watching one of the neighborhood boys for a few hours and he and Shepard asked if they could bike to the library together. We said sure, but an hour later when it was almost dark and they still weren’t home I was getting pretty nervous. So Greg and Caden walked to the library and they weren’t there. The next ten minutes were pretty terrifying as Greg ran back home to get his car and the neighbor got on his bike and they had to conduct a little search party around town until they found the boys on their way back home. It was so scary not knowing where they were. It really shook me up, especially since this was only the second day Shepard has had more adventurous biking privileges. But it was hard to be mad at him because he was so dang happy about the bag of books his older friend helped him pick out at the library. He normally hates to read, but he was so excited to read those books.

I spent Wednesday baking this birthday cake for my mother-in-law, Cindy. Like literally the entire day – ha! It was fun, though! I used to bake SO much, before I discovered my non-food related creative outlets. Spending an entire random day in September just giving myself over to the baking was really great! I saw this recipe a few weeks ago in my new cookbook, Bravetart. I had it mentally bookmarked as something I could possibly make for my own birthday, but decided I’d make it for Cindy instead. The recipe ended up being a lot more complicated and sciencey (SO many temperatures to follow for every single step!) than I expected, but it turned out great! 🙂

We had a pretty low key celebration as Steve and Cindy just got home from two weeks in Greece the day before. We ordered pizzas and hung out at our house for the night. It was nice to catch up after not seeing each other in awhile.

The boys had coffee for breakfast on Thursday. It was a one time special deal because we ordered this coffee from their friend’s fundraiser and they really wanted to try it. It was also Homecoming this week, though none of their dress days were particularly exciting, so I didn’t take pictures besides this day (hat day for Shepard).

It’s amazing how much older they both look with pants and hats!

Overall, Thursday was a pretty weird day. I had planned to work all day, but just couldn’t get motivated. I was tired, yet jittery. All I really wanted to do was read. Reading and prepping for Friday was really all I accomplished.

And Friday was Cranberry Fest day! My parents picked me up at 5:15 and we got to Warrens by about 6:45. Despite the original forecast of downpours, there was not a drop of rain in sight! It was definitely chillier than I was expecting, but manageable. We walked around for about five hours checking everything out and it was a lot of fun! The uneven ground was tough on my mom and I and our various physical issues, but I’d say we did pretty good overall.

My biggest and most surprising find was a new rug for our family room. I haven’t been super thrilled with the one we have because lots of kids plus dirty dog plus cream/gray/yellow colors is the perfect recipe for grungy icky looking carpet. This new one will be much better!

After Cranberry Fest we hit up Starbucks and all the Tomah shops we like to go to. Then headed over to LaCrosse for a few shops and our annual trip to Ulta. We usually always get HuHot for dinner, but this is the year we ate more food at Cranberry Fest and none of us were hungry enough for unlimited Mongolian bbq. We finished the day in the Dells at the craft barn and then had a late night dinner at new deli. Despite the physical pains, I think it was a really good day! I always have so much fun on our Cranberry Fest trips. Most years we go Friday and Saturday, but I think just going the once this year was about all we could handle. I definitely don’t feel like I missed out on anything, though. Perfect amount of time at every location!

Here’s most of what I bought. Last year I just got dip and two candles, so I guess I was much more successful this year! I also bought the rug, and a couple of Christmas gifts, and an antler for Annie. The cannoli and donut and bag on the right are also dog treats. 🙂

It was hard to get a good picture of the colors, but it matches this room perfectly! The browns match the furniture, the tan matches the wall, the blues match the ottoman and footstools. It’s like it was made for that room!

Greg was not super thrilled that I bought it, but then he found the exact rug on amazon for $500 (I paid $125), so I think he’s okay with it now… I like that it now perfectly matches the more mint green ottoman I got a few weeks ago online and thought was going to be more teal.

Anyway, that was my week! Today I’m just in recovery mode. My legs are so sore from all the walking on bumpy grass yesterday. I’m also so cold today, it’s hard to be productive. We’re not a family to turn the heat on in September. But…after our first freeze last night, it’s pretty dang cold today! I’ve mostly just been reading and napping and doing a little bit of cleaning. I’m trying to get motivated enough to run over to the apple orchard, but I haven’t mustered it up yet. But I’m running out of time.